Cold showers and broken-down busses

As you know, I just came back from a trip to Slovenia. So you're thinking that the title of this entry is in reference to Slovenia, right? Nope. It's in reference to Ireland.

Slovenia is a beautiful, easy-going country. Everyone seemed to be sporty and into outdoor activities, and I didn't see a single person wearing a suit. Everyone was easy-going and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Yet, public transport still managed to run on time. The busses, though they didn't travel frequently in all parts of the country, did run according to schedule. The trains were fabulous. They were so clean and nice, they reminded me of Swiss trains, and the bathrooms were about three times the size of a conventional train bathroom.

At one point in my trip, I took a bus from Kobarid, in the north-west of the country near the Italian and Austrian border, over to Bled via the Vršič Pass (alt 1600m) in the Julian Alps. There were a bunch of women on the bus when I boarded. Shortly after the trip started, they got off and I was the only person on the bus for nearly the entire trip to Bled. The driver, who I will call Tobey Maguire because that's who he looked like, chatted with me, made sure that I liked the music he was playing, and then when there was a 20-minute stopover in one town, let me get out and go to the store and come back. It was cool. In Ireland, he would have stopped en route, waited for another bus to come along and then would have told me to get on that one because he's going "out of service." This has happened to me so often in Ireland. I'm sure that if the number of passengers falls below a certain amount, Dublin bus drivers are instructed to dump all remaining passengers and abandon the route. On any given weekend, a bus is supposed to come along my street once every 7-8 minutes, or three within any given 1/2 hour. Often I've been left waiting for 30-45 minutes for a bus to come along, and then when it does, it often just drives past me because it's full. This has happened consistently enough for me to believe that only a 1/3 of scheduled busses actually make it out on to the roads in Dublin.

When busses do run in Dublin, it doesn't mean that they are running well. The bus I was on yesterday suffered from a distinct lack of shocks. It lurched so bad, and those of us sitting up top had to actually hold on to the rails. If anyone was drunk, they would have been hurling for sure. I've also been on several busses that have just broken down. On one occasion, a bus I was on stalled every time it came to a stop. Eventually it just didn't start up again and we were dumped out literally in the middle of nowhere. Most of the Dublin busses are Volvo's, which is supposed to be a good brand. Maybe they got the factory seconds for a cheaper rate.

The shower in my apartment is a bit dodgy. The water pressure isn't that great, and we often don't have hot water. This past weekend, we had to turn on the heat in our apartment just to get some hot water, as what was starting to happen was that the hot water tank would automatically shut itself off unless the heat was on. It was a warm, sunny day in Ireland yesterday and since my window is south-facing, my bedroom was a complete heatsink. I also can't open my bedroom window when I'm not around due to evil stray cats (see previous post titled Stray Cat Strut). I know several people in the UK and Ireland in which hot water is a real issue. Part of the reason why I changed gyms to one closer to my apartment is so that I have a back-up shower in case of real problems - and I've had to put the back-up plan into use (see previous post titled I'll Get to It... Mañana).

Meanwhile, when in Slovenia, I stayed in two different youth hostels and one B&B. In all three places, the showers were quite good, with great water pressure and hot water - no matter what time of day it was. In the B&B, the shower was probably the best one I've had in Western Europe. The water pressure was almost too great.

So you would think that Slovenia, even though they were the go-getters of the Yugoslav union, might have suffered in terms of water, roads and transport during the Communist reign, but not so. They've managed to surpass most of Western Europe and leave Ireland in the dust.